A Love For All Time

Cover

Title A Love For All Time

Author Bertrice Small

ISBN 0-045-14044-16

Publisher Onyx Press

Category Romance

Shira's Rating

<==Buy from Amazon.com in the U.S. (Prices quoted in U.S. dollars, shipped from U.S. warehouse.)

<==Buy from Amazon.co.uk in the U.K. (Prices quoted in British pounds, shipped from U.K. warehouse.)

What It's About

This is a romance novel which tells of how Aidan St. Michael and Conn O'Malley found love during the era of Queen Elizabeth of England in the 1500's and then found that love challenged when life threw obstacles in their way. This book, which is a sequel to All The Sweet Tomorrows, takes the reader from Queen Elizabeth's court in England to a Turkish harem and back to England.

The reason I've included a review of this book on my web site is that part of it is set in Turkey. I don't want to give away too much of the plot by telling you how she got there and what goes on once she gets there, but suffice it to say that Aidan was betrayed by someone she had once trusted.

Like most romance novels, this book definitely contains some sex scenes. However, its scenes are more explicit than those I've seen in many other romance novels. A number of the scenes involve activities that some people would think were downright perverse. Although they didn't bother me, readers who prefer books to be less, um, lusty probably wouldn't appreciate this one. Although Aidan is a somewhat innocent heroine, she endures some rather unpleasant activities in her effort to survive the tribulations that life has forced on her.

Its Good Points

I like the fact that the lead characters are strong, likeable, and intelligent. I always enjoy a book more when its primary character appeals to me. Conn was the handsome, manly man, and Aidan was the sweet, innocent heroine.

Bertrice Small clearly did extensive research when preparing this book. Although I certainly would not encourage anyone to think of a romance novel as being a legitimate source of historical or cultural information, I nonetheless was impressed at the overall use of historical detail in this book. I'm not an expert on either Elizabethan England or 16th-century Turkey, but Aidan St. Michael's world was consistent with what I do know of those times and places.

Some romance novels have plots so simple that by page 10 or so you know exactly what is going to happen throughout the rest of the book. In contrast, A Love For All Time's plot was certainly not simple. It introduced a variety of characters, and took them through many twists and turns.

I think a number of Western women fantasize about life in the Ottoman harem, imagining it to be a place of beauty, pampering, and sensual delights. This book portrayed the dark side of what it's like to be snatched away from everyone you love, be enslaved, and be subjected to the whims of someone who has ultimate power over you. It portrays harem life as a world in which very few women have any rights at all, a world embroiled in intruigues and betrayal. It reveals the policy of fratricide employed when Sultans took power. In short, it debunks the fantasies and exposes some of the cold realities of that world. I applaud the author for her courage in addressing these issues head-on.

On The Negative Side....

The author unnecessarily paraded a number the characters from the first two books in the Skye O'Malley series in and out of the story without adding much value to the plot. This was particularly true of Skye's children. Some of them played a useful role in the plot, but others seemed to appear solely for the purpose of providing readers of Small's earlier books with a quick update on the lives of everyone. Even though I had read the earlier books, I found these walk-on appearances by characters who did little or nothing to further the plot of this book to be somewhat irrelevant, annoying, and gratuitous. I imagine I would have found them even more annoying if I hadn't read the earlier books.

This book is actually quite good, and I felt it was one of the stronger books in the series about Skye's extended family. The main reason I gave it only 3 stars instead of 4 is that it doesn't provide a lot of depth of information about the Middle East. What it provides is good, and matches well with my independent historical research. But because there's not a large amount of such information in this book, I can't position it as a significant resource for people who want to immerse themselves in stories about the Orient.

In Conclusion

I liked this book better than its predecessor, All The Sweet Tomorrows, but not as much as I liked The Kadin or Valide: A Novel Of The Harem. (Both are reviewed elsewhere on this web site.) Compared to most other romance novels I've read, it's actually pretty good. But if you're looking for a book that teaches you something about Ottoman Turkey, The Kadin and Valide are better choices. There's nothing wrong with the view this offers of the Turkish harem--it just doesn't provide the depth of information about that world that the other books do.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys historical romance novels, particularly ones with a hefty dose of passionate sex scenes, then you'll probably like this book very much. However, if you've never appreciated romance novels, or if you are squeamish about books with lots of explicit sex including some variations that wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, this is not the right book for you.

Aidan's sojourn in Turkey provided a mixed view of the Orient. For a time, she was able to find happiness there, but for a time she also found misery. I think this blend was good--it appropriately debunks the fantasy view so many people have in which they imagine life in a Turkish harem as focused on pampering and beauty. It reminds the reader that the world of the harem was a world of slavery, a world where women were denied control over decisions affecting their own lives.

This book is number three in a series of stories about a woman named Skye O'Malley and her extended family. If you want to read A Love For All Time, I would first urge you to read the other books that precede it in the continuity. (See below.) Although the story is designed to stand on its own, and the book does provide brief explanations when necessary of what came before, I think most people would find it much easier to follow if they read the other books first.

Here is the order in which I would recommend reading Bertrice Small's books, with links to the reviews I have written of them:

The Kadin. Although this is not part of the Skye O'Malley series, it introduces characters and context that are referred to in A Love For All Time.
Skye O'Malley. This is the first book in the series about Skye and her extended family. I highly recommend reading this before reading A Love For All Time. Otherwise, when you read A Love For All Time, you'll feel like you need a scorecard to keep track of the many characters that Small parades in front of you.
All The Sweet Tomorrows. This is the sequel to Skye O'Malley. Although I was a bit disappointed with this book, I would still recommend that if you do want to read more books in the Skye series, then you should read this before the others. Otherwise, you'll find some of the references to past events and characters in the later books confusing.
A Love For All Time. Here is where the book described in the review on this page falls in Small's timeline. This one comes third in the "Skye" continuity.
Love Wild And Fair. This is not one of the books in the Skye O'Malley series, but it is the sequel to The Kadin and part of the plot takes place in Turkey. You could read This Heart Of Mine without first reading Love Wild And Fair, but I would recommend reading Love Wild And Fair before reading Lost Love Found, which is listed below.
This Heart Of Mine. I don't plan to review this one for my site, because the heroine's adventures take her to India, which falls outside my geographical scope. But if you've enjoyed the other books about Skye's family so far, you'll want to read this one, which is number four in the series.
Lost Love Found. Bertrice Small takes you back to Turkey in this one, the fifth book in her story about Skye O'Malley and her family. Don't tackle this one unless you've read everything above. I made that mistake, and felt entirely confused at all the flashbacks explaining what had gone before.
Wild Jasmine. This is the sixth book in the story of Skye O'Malley's world, and it's the natural sequel to This Heart Of Mine. I don't plan to review this one for my site, because the heroine's time in the Orient takes place in India, which falls outside my geographical scope. But if you're hooked on the Skye O'Malley series, you'll probably want to read this one, too.